Russia becomes a republic

On 14 September 1917 (1 September in the Julian calendar) the Provisional Government announced that “the political order by which the Russian State is governed is a republican order”, and proclaimed the Russian Republic. By the same resolution the government handed its full power to five ministers headed by the Prime Minister Alexander Kerensky, a body called the Directory or the Council of Five. The document was signed by Kerensky as Minister-Chairman and by the Minister of Justice, Alexander Zarudny. The British chronology of the war gives the date as 15 September. The text of the resolution, however, is dated 1 September Old Style, that is, 14 September, and this is the date given by Russian sources and studies.

Half a year without a name

Since the fall of tsarism in March 1917 Russia had formally been neither a monarchy nor a republic. Grand Duke Michael Alexandrovich, in whose favour Nicholas II had abdicated, refused on 16 March (3 March Old Style) to accept the throne until the people had pronounced on the form of government in a Constituent Assembly. The Provisional Government held to this principle. Official documents spoke of the “Russian State”, and all fundamental decisions, from the form of the system of government to land reform, were put off until the Constituent Assembly, whose elections were postponed in August to November.

Meanwhile the revolution had made a republic a matter of course. The socialists pressed for its proclamation, and in July their demands that the government should immediately proclaim a republic and begin land reform were one of the reasons for the resignation of Prince Georgy Lvov. When at the beginning of September General Lavr Kornilov moved against the government, the Mensheviks on the executive committees of the soviets announced that they would demand the immediate proclamation of a democratic republic, the dissolution of the Duma and land reform. Leon Trotsky pointed out that this was precisely why the word “republic” appeared for the first time in the government’s proclamation on the treason of the Commander-in-Chief, in which Kerensky promised to defend “the republican order”.

The resolution of 1 September

The justification was brief. “General Kornilov’s revolt has been suppressed,” the government wrote. “But great is the confusion it has brought into the ranks of the army and the country. And again great is the danger that threatens the fate of the Fatherland and its freedom.” The government considered it necessary to put an end to the uncertainty about the political system of the state, citing the “unanimous and enthusiastic acceptance of the republican idea” supposedly shown by the State Conference in Moscow. The urgent need for firm steps to restore order led it to hand power to five ministers. The government declared its main task to be the restoration of order in the state and of the fighting capacity of the army, and at the same time announced that within the next few days it would broaden its membership with representatives of all those who placed “the eternal and common interests of the Fatherland” above the interests of parties and classes. The proclamation did not settle the system of government definitively: the shape of the state was still to be decided by the Constituent Assembly.

The Directory

The Directory consisted of Kerensky, for two days also Commander-in-Chief; the Foreign Minister Mikhail Tereshchenko; the new War Minister, General Alexander Verkhovsky, who as commander of the Moscow Military District had condemned Kornilov’s move from the very first moment; the new Navy Minister, Rear-Admiral Dmitry Verderevsky, who was respected by the moderate socialists; and the Minister of Posts and Telegraphs, the Menshevik Aleksei Nikitin, soon also Minister of the Interior. The Directory, also called the “business cabinet” (Russian delovoi kabinet), was meant to be a transitional government for the duration of the crisis in which the second coalition government had broken up: the Kadets had left the cabinet during the revolt, and the remaining ministers had placed themselves at the Prime Minister’s disposal.

It was partly the realisation of an idea Kerensky had been pushing since the first days of the revolt: instead of a government controlled by the soviets he wanted a small cabinet with strong powers. The leaders of the soviets, worn out by all-night meetings, eventually agreed. They did not, however, give up their own plan. The executive committees summoned to Petrograd for the end of September a conference of all democratic organisations, which was to decide what government should run the republic until the Constituent Assembly.

A republic without support

The proclamation was intended to strengthen a government that had just come through its gravest crisis since July, and to show that there would be no return to the monarchy. The country, however, was preoccupied with something else: the collapse of Kornilov’s revolt, the arrest of the Commander-in-Chief and a rapid swing of opinion to the left. The day before, the Petrograd Soviet had for the first time adopted a Bolshevik resolution. The Russian Republic lasted less than two months. On 8 October the Directory gave way to Kerensky’s third coalition government, and in November the Bolsheviks seized power. In January 1918 the Constituent Assembly, at its only session, managed to proclaim Russia a democratic federal republic before the Bolsheviks dispersed it.